Media applications in computing environments provide a variety of different media experiences. For example, a user may view video in a full screen mode, a windowed mode, or a background mode on a desktop or laptop computer or a portable digital media device. The varying scales of the display real estate available in each of these modes introduces challenges in providing consistent media controls (e.g., play, stop, pause, rewind, volume, etc.) that are appropriate for the available display real estate and other characteristics (e.g., the need to accommodate user input through a touch screen). Existing media controls obscure portions of the screen, are difficult to control through a touch screen, and do not scale well in functionality according to the context of the media application or size of the media application.